Chad Gordon
Attacking is a little harder to nail down. The complexity outweighs serving & receiving, making honing in on the best approach very time-consuming. Here's where I've landed: The input for attacking is really the tough one - what factors help predict whether an attacker will be successful or not? In my experimentation, I've looked at... Continue Reading →
We treat serve receive in the same manner we handle serving. We identify the expectations and then quantify the results appropriately. In this case, we break down expectations in FBSO efficiency by conference. We look at how well teams in each conference do when receiving serve (with service errors removed, as these are not really... Continue Reading →
To break down serving, we must first identify the expectations and then figure out how to quantify the results. Some may immediately think that because it's a closed loop skill, that the expectations are simply 0. We have no expectations, there's no other force acting on your ability to hit the serve. But this isn't... Continue Reading →
In other sports, the concept of expected points, goals, etc. has been around for a while. Volleyball seemingly lacks this concept on a familiar level and so I figured I'd take a shot. In basketball, expected points (xP) is a common metric. Oh, the Warriors on a corner 3? That's worth 1.3 points per shot.... Continue Reading →
To touch or not to touch, that is the question. There are a couple philosophies that I know of when it comes to blocking. First is the GMS, more hands are better than fewer hands. They know that hitting efficiency in the aggregate declines when you move from solo, to double, to triple blocks -... Continue Reading →
So I got a message a couple months ago and 100% failed to respond, so I'm trying to do it some justice now. The question is about FBSO Efficiency, Passer Ratings, and Winning. *Because the question was in reference to passing, I eliminated missed serves from the analysis. So here are the 2017 numbers for the... Continue Reading →
It's been about a year since I posted, so I figured my unpaid sabbatical from this blog should come to an end soon. I snatched the 2018 men's data, parsed it, and decided that the controversial (if you were to survey volleyball parents) topic of service error should be the first thing I dive into... Continue Reading →
Been waiting to dive into this for a while now, so let's get right to it. What you see above is the Service Error % in a given set and the opponent's FBSO efficiency: (opp. won in FBSO - opp. lost in FBSO)/total serves. The teams you see as labels are the serving teams, so... Continue Reading →
Just got access to the men's side of the data so I'm still playing around with a few things. What you see above is a data-driven visualization of what coaches might term "the key guy to stop." In recent years with a team like BYU, the common phrase was "Taylor Sander is going to get... Continue Reading →
